Reclaiming a jungle

Persistence, hard work and vision help give an out-of-control front garden a new lease on life

AFTER: The reclaimed area is no longer an albatross, but a joy to behold.

Photograph by: Ailsa Francis
, Ottawa Citizen

At the end of my regular visit to maintain the backyard garden belonging to the Smith Hale/Vandergeest family, the question was posed to me once again: "When will we start work on the front?"

To be completely honest, the prospect of tackling this overgrown and steeply terraced garden that faces south on a busy road was a little daunting.

The multi-levelled beds were blanketed with persistent ground covers, like periwinkle, creeping jenny, goutweed and (my own personal nemesis) creeping bellflower - a collection that made some sense for a shady location, but not this high-profile sunny spot. It had several burgeoning junipers that were threatening to overtake their stone boundaries and a huge white cedar that shaded the front porch and living room.

I had completed a design plan that included a variety of sun-loving perennials to provide interesting foliage and a long season of blooms and that would thrive in this dry location, as well as shrubs that would provide structure and mass.

The gardener of the family, Fiona Smith Hale, pointed out several perennials that she wanted to salvage and other plants that were not so favoured. A clutch of spirea that had been planted at the base of the front porch soon found a new place alongside the driveway.

A rose that predated Smith Hale's family was dispatched and some peonies that were choked among periwinkle plants were liberated and encouraged to bloom.

And dozens of bearded iris that were lined up like soldiers waiting for their marching orders on the lower terrace were rearranged throughout the beds.

But, I'm getting ahead of myself. When you have a garden that has long since taken its own path, daring you to enter and make sense of it all, jumping in and going to work can be more than a little intimidating. The answer is to just do it.

So the work began methodically.

Starting in the lowest terrace, the vast collection of iris had to be lifted and checked for the dreaded iris borer. This is a pest that, as an adult moth, lays its eggs on the iris leaves in the autumn so that the tiny larvae can then make their way downward into the swollen roots (called rhizomes). Here, they feed and grow fat and happy, eventually allowing rot to set in, turning the rhizome to putrid mush, severely inhibiting the health of the plant and eventually killing it.

So the iris plants had to be dug up, the infected rhizomes discarded and the plants set aside until the entire job was finished - a waiting game that doesn't harm this particular plant.

Smith Hale and her husband, Ron Vandergeest, thankfully spared me the job of removing the junipers; this was an effort requiring lots of sweat, muscle and persistence. Junipers grow a woody, sprawling root system and put up a mighty resistance to being unearthed.

As we worked our way up to the top level, the dense tangle of periwinkle became the enemy. Dealing with the creeping jenny had been a breeze since its roots are shallow and lift without much resistance.

Periwinkle, on the other hand, is determined and removing mature plants requires putting your entire weight on a spade, jumping down on it and lifting huge clumps of the tangled mess, shaking off the soil (or in this case, since the soil was clay, prying it away from the roots) one clump after the other.

Another plant that had threatened to overrun the garden is called donkey tail spurge (Euphorbia myrsinites). It is chosen for its attractive glaucous blue fleshy foliage that encircles trailing stems, in effect resembling a donkey tail.

This plant oozes white sap when cut and it can produce a serious skin rash. We allowed some of the donkey tail spurge to remain in this garden, but one must keep an eye on it and always use gloves if it needs editing.

After clearing the levels from bottom to top, amending the soil, replanting the perennials that were allowed to stay and placing the new shrubs and perennials, the garden has finally been reclaimed for both the homeowners and passersby. And it is no longer an albatross but a joy.

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